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Is Salman Khan's MENTAL jinxed?

For Salman Khan it indeed would be a moment of perplexing and amusement that his latest release MENTAL is hurtling from one controversy to another. Indeed, for Salman Khan it never has happened that his films in the shooting stage have been mired in controversies, had to face the situation where shoots have been postponed on one count or the other. Does it connote ominous portents for MENTAL?

MENTAL is a remake of superhit film STALIN, which was directed in Telugu by GHAJINI famed director AR Murugadoss, and the Hindi version in the form of MENTAL is being directed by Salman Khan's brother Sohail Khan. In MENTAL Salman Khan plays the role of Social messiah and the film is supposed to be released on 22nd November 2013.

The major controversy that MENTAL has been embroiled in is related to the heroine of the film Sana Khan who has been reportedly involved in a kidnapping bid, and after this news became public she has gone underground affecting the shooting schedule of the film in a big way. However, the production house holds the view that controversy associated with Sana Khan would not affect the shooting schedule, as she has a small role to play in the film and the main role in the film is being played by Tabu and Daisy Shah.

Another controversy that MENTAL has faced relates the stuntsmen. Being a film which is adaptation from super hit South Indian film STALIN, the stunts for MENTAL were being planned in the same proportion as they were in STALIN. But the hitch is the terms of agreement. As per the agreement that Hindi films stuntsmen have, any film which uses stunts from South Indian film need to have 70% stuntsmen from amongst those who are doing it for Hindi films, while the South Indian stuntsmen want that their share in the construct should be 50%, which is not acceptable to the stuntsmen union of Southern Film industry. This controversy resulted in significant loss for MENTAL.

One only hopes that these two controversies would not deter the pace of MENTAL and it would be released on the scheduled date for which it has been planned.